PART TWO - Sheerline Features & Advertising I cannot stress enough the approach Victa took for the new decade. In early 1961, Victa would announce a sales milestone - half-a-million mower sales. Victa was on an expansion and sales record trajectory.
The Sheerline was introduced as a three-model line-up: the Victa Standard; the Victa Four Star; and the Victa Sheerline. The Sheerline was introduced alongside Victa's first 4-stroke, the Four Star. Factory pricing is telling: the 4-stroke (62 guineas), Sheerline (56 guineas), and the Standard (49 guineas).
The new design philosophy was incorporated into Victa's first 4-stroke, the 4-Star, and the Sheerline. The Standard would be the remnant 'toe-cutter' design from the 1950s.
The biggest change was a skirted base that could much better control projectiles and - the second reason - enable superior grass collection. If you wanted to turn grass into lawn (and make it easy) then Victa had to engage in grass catcher designs that had been used on other rotaries for about three decades!
The Sheerline (and its 4-stroke equivalent) did this. These were the first Victas with a fixed, skirted alloy base and the first Victas to offer a grass catcher.
The Sheerline was the first Victa to offer 'instant' height adjustment too! The lever and segment design had won the day, and it still survives to this day. Victa's use of a rotary wheel on its late 1950's mowers were slow, complex, expensive-to-make, and made it difficult to pre-set desired heights of cut. A Better design had won the day.
ADVERTISING All the advertising records I have found indicate that the Model 9 preceded the introduction of the Model 6 Sheerline - and why wouldn't that be so! The focus was on STYLE - a streamlined new cowling with integral fuel tank, a new height adjuster, a hush-tone muffler, and Victa's first grass catcher, that would not have looked out-of-place as a side-car on a fast motorcycle. Brilliant!
